birthday month celebration part tres

so my self-absorbed birthday month celebration continues
i guess that's a benefit of not having kids
i can be totally self-absorbed
so here's what i've done in celebration this past week

day 15: read a book - book 2 and 3 of The Hunger Games series
day 16: finished the series and watched TV - total veg
day 17: went to see The Last Gas at the local theatre (don't bother...)
day 18: went apple picking (yea!)
day 19: spent quality time with my honey, just the two of us, talking about anything not work related
day 20: baked some paper bag apple pies which i shared with our neighbor
day 21: had drinks with Survivor Bob

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One day watching Food Network, I saw them bake an apple pie in a brown paper bag - you know, the kind you used to get from the grocery store.  Something about it cooking more evenly and coming out beautifully golden brown.  I'm a sucker for a good cooking trick technique and have been wanting to try it ever since.  Since we had just been apple picking, and I LOVE apple pie, I decided now was as good a time as any to try it out.  I hit the store and got all the ingredients I needed, mixed everything up and assembled the pie.  I got ready to add my pie to the paper bag when something hit me.  Then I proceeded to have a conversation with my honey that went something like this...

Me:  Sean, do you have any issues with me putting a paper bag in the oven?
Sean:  Tonya, let me ask you one question - what do we start the bonfires with?
Me:  newspaper?  *smirk on my face*
Sean:  and???  we have a gas stove...if you sit right here and watch it the whole time with a fire extinguisher next to you....
Me:  It says I can use parchment paper instead but we don't have any.
Sean:  I guess use the bag...on second thought why don't you call Alicia and see if she has some parchment paper - whatever that is.

BTW...Camp didn't burn down and it made for a very tasty pie (the recipe is linked above)!

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Who is Survivor Bob, you ask?  It's actually a very funny story.  That was not at all the plan when we left the house.  There's a local late night show that airs each Saturday night.  I've never seen it, as we don't get local channels, but I knew when they were taping the show and thought it would be so fun to see them tape.  I had been to see David Letterman before, so this was the next logical step in my late night show watching.  Anyone can go to the taping for a donation.  I was so psyched and finally had convinced Sean to muster up the energy to leave the house and go with me.  So we pulled up, ton of cars everywhere, and walk in.  "We're here for the show."  "Well, it's in the back.  Feel free to go back there but they're just wrapping up."  Yes, you read that right, we showed up when they were done. HA!  Apparently I read the flier wrong and missed the little 6 at the front indicating the start time and read it as starting at 9:00 pm.

In my whiniest voice I exclaimed "What are we going to do now?  I saved up today's birthday month celebration activity for the show.  We HAVE to do SOMETHING."  Being the loving husband he is, and continuing to put up with my celebrating, suggested we go to our wedding reception location and have a glass of wine.  We walked in the door with a group of three other people (who we also saw leaving the late night show taping when we were trying to show up), holding the door for one another, making a funny about who does that anymore.  We settled in at the bar and waited quite some time for the bartender to arrive and take our order.  No one came to take the order for the other group that came in with us so they got restless and moved to the bar next to us.

It was a tall, lean man in a bow tie and another man and woman.  They immediately introduced themselves and we began chatting it up.  Bow tie man was introduced as "Survivor Bob", which meant nothing to Sean or me as we don't watch much TV (Sean HATES reality TV).  Come to find out he was the winner of season 17 and was one of the interviewees on the late night show we tried to go see. He was so charming to talk to and had such great stories about the whole experience.  He even showed us how he started the fire that helped him win - literally.  Come to find out, he also won 'fan favorite' that year and I can definitely see why - SO personable and such a story-teller.  So we sat, exchanging stories until they kicked us out because they were trying to close up shop.

...and that, my friends, is how I came to have drinks with Survivor Bob!